Teaching hal about format/fsck/label changing

[Martin Pitt]

Hello hal developers,

The lack of nice desktop integration of volume label changing,
fscking, and formatting has bothered me for a long time already. Now I
finally have some time to work on this.

I sketched what I think will be a sane solution into a specification
for Ubuntu [1]. In short, this is:

 * Factorize all the fs specific knowledge about particular file
   systems into a hal backend (similar to the mount one). In
   particular, hal should get functions for
   - changing the volume label
   - querying the label constraints (length and charset), if
     appropriate for that fs
   - querying the fsck status (time of last fsck for now)
   - calling fsck on a unmounted drive, or scheduling it for fsck on
     next opportunity (IOW, reboot) for a mounted volume

 * Call these new functions at appropriate places in the UI, in
   particular:
   - "Rename..." option and F2 for drive/volume icons (computer place,
     volume icons on desktop)
   - Drive/Volume properties dialog (change label, fsck status, fsck)

What do you think about this? I'd like to get a general agreement
about the design before I start hacking, to make sure that the
improvements can be adopted upstream without problems.

Thank you,

Martin

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PartitionManagement

-- 
Martin Pitt        http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer   http://www.ubuntu.com
Debian Developer   http://www.debian.org
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